Gas tax strategy strange on both sides

According to at least one lobbyist and one newspaper reporter, New Hampshire House Democrats are pursing a strategy on the gasoline tax hike which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Nor for that matter does the Republican strategy.

Here’s what I’ve heard.

When they voted for the 15 cent gas tax increase last week, Democrats didn’t ever think that would be the final number; they just wanted to move the bill on to Ways and Means where it will be pared back, probably halved.

If that’s true, it makes no sense. All but ten Democrats are already on record in support of the 83 percent increase, a fact which can and will be used against them no matter how much lower the tax is when it comes back from Ways and Means.

Thus, to speak metaphorically, Democrats have taken a bullet for no good reason. Democrats in highly partisan districts can undoubtedly survive many such hits, but 50 or so simply cannot survive these kinds of wounds, and their leaders should be wise enough to know that.

Democrats have engaged in a game of Russian roulette when Chinese checkers would have been more appropriate — simply line those marbles up and jump them to get from one end of the board to the other. Sorry for the tortured analogy — I can’t get my mind off that little old woman I used to play checkers with when I was six years old, the one who had her husband’s ashes in an urn in her house.

If the Democrats lose control of the New Hampshire House in 2014 (and I suspect they will), last week’s vote will most likely be the single greatest reason.

However, Republican strategy made little sense either. If the minority party wanted to defeat the bill, one would have thought that it would have worked behind the scenes to quietly pick off 20 or 30 Democratic votes to pull a surprise upset. The last thing Republicans should have tried to do was put their most divisive figure forward in opposition to the bill.

Yet that’s precisely what Republicans did. Former Speaker Bill O’Brien, rather than sitting quietly in the back row and voting against the bill, couldn’t stop himself from leading an amendment fight against it. Rather than unify Republicans, O’Brien succeeded merely in splitting his own party and in unifying Democrats, many of whom had serious reservations about the bill ... until the man they like least, Bill O’Brien, took the lead.

This is precisely what O’Brien did earlier with his acerbic defense of guns on the House floor; he drove wavering Democrats back into the fold, and whenever Democrats are untied, they win.

Am I saying that O’Brien might have convinced some Democrats, who were going to vote against the tax hike, to hold their nose and vote for it?

Bingo!

You just can’t make such stupidity up ... on the part of both parties.

Apparently the bully without a pulpit cares more for his ego than in helping his party win. If he really wants to win, he needs to sit down and be quite; maybe even pretend to be on the opposite side (just kidding on that suggestion, but it would certainly throw monkey wrench into Democratic plans)

Don’t expect the main stream media to do anything than provide oodles of coverage for anything O’Brien does. They aren’t stupid; they realize anything O’Brien touches will automatically turn to dog poo. Nor is the Democratic state leadership stupid; if Congressman Annie Kuster is in fact vulnerable, there is nothing Ray “Put The Cat In the Basement” Buckley would like better than for O’Brien, the one Republican Kuster would swamp in November, to the Republican nominee.

At the risk of offending Lucille “Don’t Quote Shakespeare To Me” Weber, I think a quote from the Immortal Bard would be appropriate here to describe ego run amok, O’Brien style. Unfortunately, most of my quotes come from Julius Caesar, and I suspect Macbeth, Hamlet or another play would provide better fodder here.

Any ideas?

Help me out here.

State Rep. Steve Vaillancourt

R-Manchester

For more from State Rep. Steve Vaillancourt visit http://www.nhinsider.com